Survey: Nearly half of consumers use physical stores as a show room
Further fueling retailer concerns, a new report from ClickIQ suggests approximately half of consumers who have shopped online in the past six months first went to brick-and-mortar stores to check out the product for themselves.
The study found that 67 percent of consumers have shopped online recently. Nearly half – 46 percent – of this group said they had gone to physical stores and used them as a "show room" to check out a product before making the purchase on the web later.
Walmart was the biggest victim, with 41 percent of these window shoppers heading to the retail chain's physical stores before buying online. Conversely, Amazon was the biggest gainer – 48 percent ended up making their final purchase on the etailer's website. A scant 15 percent ended up buying the product from Walmart.
"When asked the drivers behind their decision to make the purchase online, the dominate reason was price at 87 percent," Retailing Today notes, citing the ClickIQ report.
Retail merchants may be able to combat this behavior by adopting aggressive price-matching policies that encourage consumers to make purchases in-store instead of online.
